1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910816093503321

Autore

Geller Peter G (Peter Geoffrey), <1963->

Titolo

Northern exposures [[electronic resource] ] : photographing and filming the Canadian north, 1920-45 / / Peter Geller

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Vancouver, : UBC Press, c2004

ISBN

1-283-33061-X

9786613330611

0-7748-5113-9

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (280 p.)

Disciplina

971.9

Soggetti

Inuit - Canada - Pictorial works - History

Inuit in motion pictures - History

Visual communication - Social aspects - Canada - History - 20th century

Documentary photography - Canada, Northern - History

Photography - Canada, Northern - History

Motion pictures - Canada, Northern - History

Canada, Northern History Pictorial works

Canada, Northern In motion pictures History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliography (p. 227-242), filmography (p. 243-246) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front Matter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Abbreviations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Taking Pictures and Making History -- More than "A Mass of Ice and Snow" -- Pictures of the "Arctic Night" -- The Business of Representing the North -- From Back to Baffin to Canada Moves North -- "Remaking it Into Here" -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Filmography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

To many, the North is a familiar but inaccessible place. Yet images of the region are within easy reach, in magazine racks, on our coffee tables, and on television, computer, and movie screens. In Northern Exposures, Peter Geller uncovers the history behind these popular conceptions of the Canadian North. This book examines the photographic and film practice of the Canadian government, the



Anglican Church of Canada, and the Hudson's Bay Company, the three major colonial institutions involved in the arctic and sub-arctic. In the first half of the twentieth century, visual representations of the region were widely circulated in official publications and presented in film shows and lantern slide lectures. Focusing on the work of prominent and prolific northern image-makers, including federal government special investigator Major Lachlan T. Burwash, first Bishop of the Arctic Archibald Lang Fleming, Beaver magazine editor and publicity expert Douglas McKay, and photographer-filmmaker-author Richard Finnie, this book engages in a contextual approach to "reading" images, analyzing the interrelated aspects of production, circulation, and reception. Geller reveals the varied ways in which taking and displaying pictures of northern people and places contributed to the extension of control over the northern reaches of the Canadian nation. Illustrated throughout with archival photographs, Northern Exposures contributes to understandings of twentieth-century visual culture and the relationship between photographic ways of seeing and the expansion of colonial power, while raising important questions about the role of visual representation in understanding the past. It will be of interest to those concerned with Canadian and cultural history, Northern and Aboriginal studies, film and communication, art history, anthropology, and visual culture.